Posted on 11/09/2005 5:23:57 AM PST by Esther Ruth
Japan Scrambles Fighters 30 Times to Repel Chinese
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
TOKYO — Japanese fighter jets have been scrambled 30 times to turn away Chinese planes approaching Japan's airspace in the last six months, more than twice the 13 times in the same period last year, officials said Wednesday.
The increased defensive posture reflects the growing tensions between Japan and China, which are squabbling over interpretations of their wartime past, undersea gas deposits, and ownership of East China Sea islands.
An Air Self Defense Force spokesman said Japan's fighter jets had scrambled 30 times in response to what were believed to be Chinese military planes in the six months from April to September. Japan's fiscal year starts in April.
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with agency policy, added that fighter jets also have been deployed since October, but declined to say how many times.
That would surpass the record-high 30 scramblings in response to Chinese planes in all of 1998. Japan began keeping track of the number of fighter jet mobilizations against specified countries in 1995.
Another official of the Air Self Defense Force declined to comment on the types of Chinese planes or what they were doing. He said there have been no major confrontations between Japanese fighter jets and foreign military planes in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Actually, China can (and IMHO probably will) invade other countries to do so. There is Siberia, there are still reserves on the Malay penninsula, Indonesia, etc. and especially in the waters of the surrounding areas in the China and South China Seas.
If China wants cheaper resources, it need only prop up the U.S. Dollar less (i.e. hold down the Yuan less).
China has large foreign currency reserves. It can buy what it wants. An ill-thought invasion merely reduces the amount of goods that China could sell to the U.S. and EU...which would cause job losses and wage declines in a China that is already under social pressure...hardly the recipe for a tasty oriental dish.
...but then people with that kind of power and ambitions (and irrespective of what folks want to believe, the PRC is still a totalitarian state) have never been known to make rational decisions.
They are rapidly building their military, they are blustering and threatening their neighbors and ourselves, and they may at some point feel the "need" to galvanize their public behind such action. What they consider historical ties and even "ownership" to places like Taiwan and Siberia could easily fuel it.
Hi Jeff ~ I wondered what type aircraft they were using, also.
How can we find out?
If they act irrationally, then you are correct.
read later
ping
It's 50-50 which way China will go, imo. They certainly bear watching. Bill Gertz of The Washington Times, has written excellent articles about China and has included entire sections of a book about how they are a force to be reckoned with.
<< The Chinese remind me of the Japanese in the late 30's. >>
If they don't pull their heads in, what's in store for them ain't so different, too.
<< The Russians are terrified of China and what would happen if they moved on Siberia. >>
Make that "when."
No "if" about it.
Russia is a dead man walking and will relatively soon lose all of its Asian empire. Whatever mass-murdering gangster-bastard warlord then controls "China" [Of whose present 3.7 million square miles 2.8 million already belongs to someone else and is but murderously colonized] will take whatever area it can invade and hold.
Who would have thought 50 years later, seeing Japan flying F15's would make me feel so good.
Besides, Pushing into Alaska typically means the Aleutians.
Nope, straight into Alaska to the pipeline.
Stalin was a moron.
<< China will have to protect it's flank by establishing a security sphere across the Pacific the same way Japan did in WW2. There's only one stradegy that plays in the Pacific; island warfare. It will probably take Hawaii, Australia and the Eastern Pacific too before it's stopped. >>
Y'know, there are probably a few dickheads in Peking who delusionally fantasize that kind of stuff, too.
The reality is that the Peking-based predatory pack of lying, looting, mass-murdering gangster bastards that so grandiosely calls itself "china," couldn't successfully invade the FRee Republic of Taiwan.
Not even if we would let it! And any attempt by it to do so would see its peasant-pummelling puny PLA arse kicked all the way to Kunming!
A Piper PA-22-135, eh? Here's a pretty one turned from a doggy old nose dragger back into a real airplane!
http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/planes/piper/PA22/pa22.html
Nice to see a fellow B5 fan.
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